Specialist Search: Schools & Scholarships

As part of an ongoing coverage of online search in all of its facets we are continuing to cover companies that are involved in all areas of search from your typical search engines like Microsoft Bing and Google to advanced and specialized search providers such as ScholarGeek who are the focus of this article.

We have previously touched on the fact that Google are one of the big giants in search and it is often thought that no one else can compete with them and that anyone else involved in online search is wasting their time.

One of the main arguments against this statement is the fact that there are so many specialist and niche areas of search out there and in fact search is an ever expanding landscape that needs more companies to fuel its growth.

As more and more services become available online and big data becomes more prevalent there will be more and more information becoming available online – not just information in the traditional sense but details of everything that is going on around us in real time.

ScholarGeek are one such company that operate in the search niche and are showing how new information can be made available online and how search can make that information accessible and useful to the public in ways that traditional search engines like Google can’t or won’t cater for.

Find Your Ideal Match for Schools & Scholarships

The concept behind ScholarGeek is to provide a platform whereby individuals can search for schools and scholarship programs by utilizing a massive database of information provided and updated by schools all over the world.

Not only does ScholarGeek provide access to this database but it also aims to tailor the results specifically to each individual on such a comprehensive scale that it can provide the most relevant course or scholarship available for each individual user that submits a request for information.

So how does it work?

ScholarGeek have published a great video on the site that explains exactly how the site works but the even without watching the video its very easy to grasp how the system works.

As soon as you visit the website you are prompted with a magnifying glass icon which if clicked on will take you to the beginning of the scholarship search process.

Here you can fill out some reasonably detailed information about yourself starting with your desired course type, length and field and then followed by some details on your history and your current academic achievements.

Once you have provided all of this information it is used to search through all of the scholarship programs within the database and then present you with the best matches based on all of the information that you have provided.

There are several competitors to ScholarGeek:

Scholarships.com

My Schoolly (App)

IIE Passport.org

Studyabroad.com

Bachelorsportal.eu

Mastersportal.eu

phdportal.eu

Zinch.com

Petersons.com

Gradschools.com

Whilst these providers offer a similar service, none of them have quite as comprehensive a set of features as those offered by ScholarGeek.

The table below shows the competition along with a list of features provided by each in comparison to ScholarGeek.